Sexualized Saturdays: Comic Book Movies Fail to Portray Queer Characters

I have been pretty impressed with comic book movies lately. Yeah, it’s still not ideal, but both Marvel and DC Comics have far more women and people of color in their upcoming movies than they had before. At least now in Marvel we have Natasha, Pepper, Wanda, and Sam Wilson and James Rhodes, and we’re about to get Black Panther and Captain Marvel, but we don’t have one single queer character. And in DC Comics we are finally getting Wonder Woman, Aquaman (played by Jason Momoa), and Black Atom (played by Dwayne Johnson), but again, still no queer characters. It’s pretty nice to see even some progress being made—well, in some areas at least. When it comes to queer representation, both DC and Marvel Comics are severely lacking even to the point of straightwashing queer characters. Despite gay marriage being legalized in the United States, continuing to be legal in at least nineteen other countries, including countries like France, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil, and gay rights gaining ever increasing support, it seems The Powers That Be are still hesitant about including gay characters in their comic book movies.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Future is (Not) Now

So it’s 2014. Same-sex marriage is legal in nineteen states, and twelve more are working on it. We’re learning how to 3-D print human organs for transplant, and scientists have just invented a color that is literally darker than black.

Early 2000’s goths, rejoice.

But having a bisexual protagonist on a TV show is apparently way too futuristic for some people.